Luncheon of the Boating Party (40 page)

“Bonsoir, mademoiselle,”
he said.

“Bonsoir à vous,”
she said, waved her fan, and glided onward.

She gave a nod to everyone, a frolicsome eye to those who priced out.

She imagined a few as lovers. No doubt the men were doing the same.

Under the lights, the air was ashimmer with desire. People sucked it in, breathed it out. She wanted to pinch the women’s cheeks, nibble the men’s ears, press their heads to her bosom, all of them, the bright, lively people of Paris.

In case some duffer-wits didn’t get the notion of the place, a
chanteuse
sang “Amanda,” a ballad about a girl who tosses away her maiden-hood in a dance hall.

On the next round, she took a closer look. No, of course it wasn’t Père l’Epingle. She shook it off.

When the
promenoirs
were filled and going too slowly, the musicians began a waltz. She stepped out of the promenade and stood near the sprawling café under the trees. That fancy-ass Hyménée had staked out the prime spot. Angèle waved her fan in time to the one-two-three, one-two-three of the waltz. The violins, the clink of glasses, the chatter, the antics, her dress, her hair in a chignon with a cascade of curls at the back—this would surely be a grand night, for Auguste’s sake, for the sake of the painting, maybe even for her. If a body expected good, then good was more likely to find you, was her notion.

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She’d have to order something to show she was alone, but the drinks cost more at the outer tables where she would be noticed. It takes some to make some, she thought and sat down. The waiters made a practice of looking right through any woman sitting alone. They knew she would order something more expensive if a man joined her. There were no secrets about this place.

She beckoned to a waiter.
“Un petit vin d’Alsace.”

He gave her a hard stare. “Is that
all,
mademoiselle?”

“For now.”

She let the waltz take her places in her mind. A little orange-seller came up to her and offered an orange in her grimy hand. Years fl ew backward.

“You have a sweet face,” she said. “Squeeze every pleasure out of life,
minette.
Even from the rind.”

“Monsieur told me to bring this to you.” She thrust it at her.

“Who?”

“Le monsieur à la fleur.”

She looked from the knobby shine on the orange, to the grease on the girl’s nose, to a silk top hat gleaming under the lamplight. The man with the gardenia leaned against a lamppost. He gave her a half smile, one side only, Auguste Renoir style. Now, wasn’t that a sign! She swept her open fan at her throat, as though the mere sight of him made her flush with heat. He wasn’t in a hurry. She liked that. He took pleasure in watching from a distance.

She leaned toward the girl. “Did he pay you decent?”

“
Bien sûr, mademoiselle!
I can go home with the rest of the oranges.”

“Good. He was an easy one, but others won’t be. Nobody
needs
to buy an orange or a flower. Use your eyes to sell when the bloke doesn’t know he wants to buy. You send him away happy, but always hold one back for yourself, because you’re not a throwaway. Remember that when you’re older and selling more than oranges.”

She glanced up. Milord of the white gardenia was still watching.

“You trot along quickly now. Don’t dally. Wrap his coin tight in your underskirt.”

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He put out his cigarette, pushed himself away from the lamppost, deferred to people moving about in front of him, and came toward her.

“May I join you?”

“An orange can buy a seat any day, milord
.
Come. Take your ease.”

The waiter descended on them instantly and said, “Bonsoir, mon-

sieur.” He had not yet brought her wine.

“Would you like something?” the man of the white gardenia

asked her.

“I’d love a half plate of oysters.
Portugaises, s’il vous plaît.
” They were the inexpensive kind.

“I will bring you
marennes,
” the waiter said. “They are superior.”

The
grand bourgeois
inclined his head toward her to be sure. She moved her index finger from side to side.

“The mademoiselle prefers
portugaises.
” He turned to her. “Only
une
demie-douzaine?
”

“A little hunger is good for the soul.”

“Une demie-douzaine de portugaises pour la mademoiselle.”

“And for you, monsieur?”

“
Blinis à la russe,
and champagne, a demi.”

His very white collar and very white teeth and very white handkerchief edged in black poking up from his breast pocket were right fi ne.

“When I saw you sitting here so still, I thought you must be a model.

And when you talked to the little girl, I thought you must be a teacher.”

“A teacher! Oh, that’s rich. You were right the first time. Some days.”

A certain cachet in that. It would let him know someone considered her desirable. “In fact, I’m going to model tomorrow.”

“For whom?”

“A talented man who doesn’t deserve to be so poor. Auguste Renoir.”

“Indeed. And other days?”

A calculated question, to determine if she was kept by a painter.

“Sometimes I work at the flower stall of the Marché de Saint Pierre in Montmartre.” Specific in case he wanted to find her, intermittent to let him know she could use some money.

“A flower seller ought to have one for herself.”

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He hailed a little girl selling roses.
“Une rouge,”
he told her. When the girl handed him a red one, he pricked himself on a thorn.

“To flirt with a rose is more dangerous than to flirt with an orange, milord.”

“No more dangerous than to flirt with a fan.”

He put his finger to his mouth and sucked the dot of blood.

“Lucky finger,” she said.

The waiter served them. She felt the first oyster slide down her throat.

“Do you come here often?” he asked.

“I used to, a long time ago.” When she came up to his crotch, and pleaded with her eyes for people to buy oranges.

“Then I’d be obliged if you would enlighten me. Who are these

people?”

His innocence must be a ruse. Well enough. She could play along.

“Look there,” she said, “at that English jockey swigging beer and ogling the women. He makes more than that Russian prince in lilac gloves.”

He chuckled. “Do you know them?”

“No, but I wouldn’t mind.”

“How do you know he’s a prince?”

“The pink lining folded down over the top of his boot.” She winked to show she was just making it up. “Those three Catalonian women are hankering to dance. Their men are at the billiard tables. You could help out the ladies.”

“I don’t speak Spanish or Catalan.”

“You don’t need words. Dancing is a language by itself.”

“So are your eyes a language, and right now I prefer the words

they’re telling me.”

“See that lady wearing a bustle? If those false cheeks were made of real flesh, they would have broken her back. And the man yapping at her shoulder in those starched trousers, stiff as what’s in them? See his hungry look? He’s fair itching after her and doesn’t know how to pace himself.”

“You’re quite the
fl âneuse,
mademoiselle.”

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“Looking is free entertainment.”

She recognized Jemmy and Picklock, two thieves from Montmartre, and turned away from them. She didn’t want them swaggering up to her and spoiling things. “See those two behind me in the tweed jackets?

Rogues from the Butte. Don’t let them near or they’ll pick your pockets as sure as I’m sitting here.”

“They seem respectable enough.”

“Upon my soul, they’re ogres in and out of Rochefort. Petty crimes, mostly. There’s plenty wickeder.”

“Angèle!” Jemmy circled around her one way, Picklock the other.

“Fancy seeing you here on the Champs-Élysées,” Picklock said in a voice as slick as oil.

“Out from the underbelly of Pigalle for a change?” Jemmy wore

that leer of thinking his reputation made him powerful.

Milord of the gardenia grasped her arm and propelled her away.

“Excuse us. The lady wishes to dance.”

He ushered her through the gate to the dance floor, paid two sous, and they joined a polka, careening in a circle, bumping into other spinning pairs and laughing. Couples swirled around her. A waltz followed.

He drew her closer to steer her, and she noticed his gold watch chain, his eyes taking her in, the strong fragrance of his gardenia unleashed in their turning, his clipped beard grazing her temple. He prolonged it with a third dance, the dizzying redowa-polka. She felt like she was fl ying.

When they came back to the table, Jemmy and Picklock had

moved on.

“That was right gallant of you, and I don’t even know the name of my
cavalier à la fleur.
”

“Marcel Olivier.”

“You’re not a baron, are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That song,
‘Ah, J’la trouv’ trop forte.’
I could sing it for a coin.”

“I’m all ears.”

At the Ball Mabille between two dances,

A young man said he was a baron.

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He offered me a townhouse and carriage

As proper setting for my good taste.

She paused to blow kisses to two men at the next table, and then resumed singing.

Lowering my eyes, I went toward him,

Voilà!
Here’s something new,

I spied some scissors in his pocket.

The baron was just a shop assistant.

“Bravo, mademoiselle. You should be onstage.”

“I was a few times. Once I sang the role of Venus in
Orpheus and the
Underworld
at the Théâtre de la Gaîté. It was only a small part, but I danced the cancan in the fi nale.”

“You are a woman of many surprises.”

“You can bet your boots on that.”

“Then you are a professional.”

He drew a coin out of his pocket and slid it across the table to touch her hand. It was a gold louis worth twenty francs.

“Oh, aren’t you a regular patron of the arts!”

The two men from the other table added three-franc écus.

“Oh, là là!”
She gathered them up, laughing, and leaned toward him, pushing one shoulder forward, offering him her décolletage. “
Merci,
milord,” she said and kissed the air close to his neatly trimmed beard.

“Truth to tell, I’m not a professional
anything.
Let’s say I’m a miscellaneous individual. Isn’t that the definition of Montmartre—a colony of miscellaneous individuals doing miscellaneous things to keep alive?

Times are hard for miscellaneous people.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“North of place Pigalle you’ll find a butcher who plays the trumpet at a cabaret, and a trapeze artist who writes poetry.”

“And south of Pigalle?”

She wrinkled her nose. “South of Pigalle, they just work and eat and drink.”

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Near them, a young Zouave in a tasseled fez and blousy red trousers, an embroidered vest, and a wide green sash was bragging about his adventures in North Africa, becoming loud and obnoxious. The regulator in long black tailcoat shook his finger at him. “Quiet down, monsieur.”

“I didn’t come here to be quiet,” the Zouave bellowed. “Time enough to be quiet in my grave. Look again at all the empty glasses of my listen-ers before you tell me again to be quiet.”

“Mark my words,” Angèle said in a low voice, “if he doesn’t close his head, he’ll be tapped on the shoulder and invited to leave.”

He quieted down for the next song, “Alsace and Lorraine,” sung at least once every evening here and at the Ambassadeurs and the Eldo-rado. People stopped talking and stood as though it were an anthem when the music mounted and the
chanteuse de la maison
belted out:
You will not have Alsace and Lorraine,

And in spite of you, we will remain French!

You could germanize the plain

But our heart, you will never have it!

And to prove it, the musicians began the long prelude to Offenbach’s quadrille and cancan from
La Vie Parisienne.

Above the cheers, the impresario shouted, “
Avancez, Messieurs et
Mesdames.
A quadrille is about to begin.”

A surge of people squeezed through the wickets, and Mademoiselle Irma, the famous
cancaneuse,
mounted the stage. Angèle grabbed Marcel’s hand and pulled him between tables and people. He dropped the sous into the box again, and they joined three other pairs to make their square.

All eight jigged forward to meet their opposite and skipped back, executing the fi ve figures until the music signaled the freer
chahut.

Shouts erupted all around them. Men danced as if the workings of their bodies were out of order. Limbs attached with elastic bands fl opped about uncontrollably. Angèle and all the women shook their skirts from side to side, raised them in a tease, kicked to the side, the front, the side.

One woman in their quadrille launched a kick that knocked off the hat of her partner when he bent forward.

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On the stage around the musicians’ pavilion, the dancers in the chorus line lifted their skirts high in the cancan, revealing a froth of ruffl ed organza against black-stockinged legs, kicking high, and then holding the kick above their heads with their hands, pirouetting, cartwheeling, sinking to the floor in the splits, springing back up again, while the crowd cheered and mimicked them.